The Fool of Hearts
by Ruby Casablanca
Summary: The Sheriff asks him about his eye, and for a moment his heart seizes because he thinks that she's seen the tear that was running down his face. Rated T for mild language.


A/N: I caught up on OUAT over the weekend, and episode four gutted me when it came to the Alice in Wonderland jail scene with Will. That single tear along with the look he was giving the page with Anastasia on it had me nearly sobbing for him. So this is a way to properly deal with my feelings. Please enjoy and reviews are always lovely :)

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><p><span>The Fool of Hearts<span>

He wakes up in a cement cell after nightmares yank him from a restless slumber. He didn't drink enough last night; he passed out before he had the chance. The punch to his face didn't do much harm at first, but the after effects...they were nasty. He thought for a moment that maybe that pain would be enough to make his mind - his _demons_ - stop screaming, but he was wrong. He's always wrong.

But it's not the nightmares that startle him. No, it's the Sheriff and her steely eyes immediately searching him for criminal offense. It's like she can see straight through him, and for a moment she reminds him of another blonde he knew, the one that haunts him from time to time...all the time. Every second of every day. Not that he'd let that show.

He's content to tell her half-truths and play her little game of good cop/bad cop. It's all banter and fun and games until she pulls out the few things that he'd managed to snag from the library before the ground fell out from under him.

He didn't know they were missing until the pages were held out in front of him, the alarmingly innocent images making it increasingly harder for him to breathe. The pages are old and worn and cared for, much like a well-loved story should be. But the Sheriff, she doesn't know the weight of what she has in her grasp, and he would like nothing more than to grab the book out of her careless hands and caress the pages, the last link he has to his past life…his current life. It's all so screwed up now.

He's waited too long and he knows it. He can feel the Sheriff's gaze locked on his every move, wondering why a fairytale is making him falter. Why it's making him fall to pieces, cracking his careless mask, bashing it in until there is nothing left.

It feels like sacrilege to claim that he doesn't know the people drawn across the cover and the page that he had torn out. He can almost hear the beautiful red woman weeping, abandon in her voice as he leaves her once more. He has to remind himself not to apologize to paper, that it won't hear him no matter how hard he pleads.

Then the Sheriff asks him about his eye, and for a moment his heart seizes because he thinks that she's seen the tear that was running down his face. But no, she was talking about the cuts and the bruises, the real problems. The damages that everyone could see. And he lies to her face and tells her that he doesn't know who did it, even though the assailant himself comes sauntering through the doors mere moments later. The look of shock and fear on the man's face is enough to make him feel like he has even an ounce of power, and if the anger running through his veins was in any way related to the beating he received at the pirate's hands then he would've reveled in watching the man squirm. But instead the anger burned like ice – damn the irony – and froze his lungs, which struggled to choke out a laugh of how wild a time he must have had to get so spectacularly fucked up when all he really wanted to do was escape. When all he really wanted to do after a day of being so miserably alone was to be comforted by a familiar face.

What a fool he was.

The Sheriff, she was holding those faces hostage now, taking them further and further away until the blue cover of his beloved book disappeared behind red leather. He couldn't ask for the book back, not without being asked 'why', and 'why' was not a question he ever felt like answering. 'Why' was a question that he asked himself day after day, night after night when he woke up alone and cold and so fucking empty inside.

Because if he answered the question, he would have to admit that he was lost. He was so very lost. He missed the adventure of it all, the running and the laughing, the blood and the tears. He missed the impossibility of true love and the magic of genies and the red of velvets that he wrapped himself in. He missed the smiles and the embraces of lovers. He missed Anastasia. And it was so damn unfair because he had only just got her back. Now she was gone – they were _all_ gone – and he was nothing.

_What happened Will? What happened to them? The genie and his bride and the queen?_

Oh, they were so far away and so long ago. Because curses are only curses if they work on everyone they reached the first time. Because curses call people back to their prisons when selfish people do selfish things like try to rewrite history.

He's tried that once. It didn't work out.

What a fool he was.

Now he plays his namesake: the drunken, thieving fool who has no attachments or loyalties. No one else from this time will see him as anything different, just like the villains. And villains don't get happy endings.


End file.
